Education

Bringing together form and functionality in harmony is the holy grail for design of any type. The newly opened Emerson College Los Angeles (ELA) achieves just that. The building needed to be sustainable and provide spaces for education, accommodation and administration whilst at the same time fostering social activity and creativity.
Read More

When Rocksmith was released in 2011, it had all the ingredients of a gaming pie capable of satisfying kings of Guitar Hero and Rock Band controllers wanting to learn how to play a real instrument in a familiar digital environment and new six-string slingers looking for an entertaining, full-featured learning package. The platform has now been refreshed for 2014, and Gizmag has spent some considerable time in the company of Rocksmtih's infinitely patient, always available virtual guitar teacher on Ubisoft's note highway to callus hell.
Read More

"Cute circuitry" is not a term you hear often – if at all – but it could be used to describe Chibitronics, which is a crafty merging of electronics and paper. The system combines familiar adhesive stickers with electronic components, such as LEDs, sensor circuits, and even a programmable microcontroller, to create a play set that educates while adding some flash to one’s works of art or otherwise mundane birthday cards.
Read More

Scientists have used 3D printing technology to transform images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope into tactile "pictures" for the blind. Astronomers Carol Christian and Antonella Nota of the Space Telescope Science Institute are experimenting with 3D models as a means of aiding education for people who cannot study visual images.
Read More

Christmas is just around the corner and the hunt for the best kids toys out there has never been more exciting. With iPhone-controlled toys, customizable robots and smart toys that aim to teach kids life skills while entertaining them, the latest breed of high-tech toys have a lot to offer. Even books and pens, augmented with a little technology can read to kids or coach them to write. If you're looking to surprise junior with toys that feature a delightful technological twist, Gizmag's top 10 coolest tech toys for kids should give you plenty of ideas.
Read More

You've probably seen a light powered by a lemon or a clock hooked up to a potato before, but a group in London recently built a similar device using a much smaller, less popular piece of produce. To promote The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair, a team of designers built the world's first Brussels sprout-powered battery and hooked it up to a set of Christmas tree lights.
Read More

Billed as "the computer anyone can make," the US$99 Kano kit supplies a Raspberry Pi computer board with the various accouterments (save for a display) required to make it into a complete computer. The Kano programming language uses graphic code blocks to implement a simple but powerful language reminiscent of BASIC.
Read More

There's a popular educational exercise in which teens are required to take care of a bag of flour for several days, as if it's a baby. The idea is that by having to lug that bag around with them everywhere they go, while keeping it from getting damaged, the kids will realize how much responsibility is involved in raising an infant. As any parent will tell you, however, there's a lot more to baby-raising than just safely lugging them around. That's why products like Realityworks' RealCare Baby were created.
Read More

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it,” Niels Bohr famously wrote. However, Minecraft players can now be slightly closer to parsing the perplexities of quantum theory, thanks to qCraft, a collaboration between Google and Dr. Spyridon Michalakis, a scholar of quantum mechanics. What does this new mod bring to the game? Only quantum teleportation, observer dependencies, and Schrödinger’s Cat, for starters.
Read More

Remember the mechanical owl from the original version of Clash of the Titans? Well, even if you don't, here's your chance to own something kind of like it. It's called ixi-play, and it's an interactive robotic owl that's designed to both entertain and educate your children.
Read More